


Ember

by Heather_Night



Series: Burn [1]
Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Deran Cody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather_Night/pseuds/Heather_Night
Summary: “Don’t you think it’s weird though?  They can test your blood to figure out if you’re predisposed to being diabetic or getting blood clots or your ice cream flavor preference but they can’t tell you if you’re going to be standard or not.”  Adrian managed to spout all of that while upside down; he was doing a handstand on the edge of the pool and as soon as he stopped rambling, he took a deep breath and hopped head first into the water.It would be nice if Adrian would let the topic go but the science of dominant and recessive identities really interested his friend.  Deran supposed it was because Adrian was most likely standard which 75% of population ended up being.Standards were primarily the worker bees of society but they also had the most choice about what they could do for jobs and who they partnered.  If he had a choice, Deran would present as standard.  Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice.
Relationships: Deran Cody/Adrian Dolan
Series: Burn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559851
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Animal Kingdom ▶ Deran Cody / Adrian Dolan





	Ember

**Author's Note:**

> Are you ready? Yeah, me neither but here is the first entry in my 25-prompt hurt/comfort bingo card. This is the first in the four part Burn 'verse.
> 
> I would like to thank my betas who helped me smooth out the rough spots. The super talented @allthehearteyes gave me valuable feedback (thank you for your enthusiasm, wisdom and heart) as did the award winning m/m author Elizabeth Noble (my world building hero). The remaining errors are my own as I always have to play some more.

Prologue

_It was ancient history, or at least history that very few paid attention to anymore. Someone—military, private sector, educational institution—it didn’t really matter who it was, just that they figured out how to manipulate a gene in human DNA. These scientists turned on the alleles, in this case three alternative forms, on the same place on the chromosome that happened to control certain sexual identities. Over time the exact technical names were forgotten but the nicknames remained; the standards had no appreciable changes but the other two options…they made things very interesting. Dominants and recessives were a special subset of the population and they were controlled by both societal expectations and their own bodies. Allele identities were very important, at least to a small segment of the population._

_This is the story of two young men who burned so brightly, they set fire to these allele identity societal expectations._

Present Day

“Don’t you think it’s weird though? They can test your blood to figure out if you’re predisposed to being diabetic or getting blood clots or your ice cream flavor preference but they can’t tell you if you’re going to be standard or not.” Adrian managed to spout all of that while upside down; he was doing a handstand on the edge of the pool and as soon as he stopped rambling, he took a deep breath and hopped head first into the water.

It would be nice if Adrian would let the topic go but the science of dominant and recessive identities really interested his friend. Deran supposed it was because Adrian was most likely standard which 75% of population ended up being. 

Standards were primarily the worker bees of society but they also had the most choice about what they could do for jobs and who they partnered. If he had a choice, Deran would present as standard. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice.

Smurf had been making more noise about how she thought Deran was going to present as a recessive. Just like her. He had to admit he was the most like her in appearance; slim build, blond and maybe even delicate looking although, boy, that was false advertising. He didn’t take shit from anyone and Smurf sure as hell didn’t. 

The problem he had with being recessive was that he just couldn’t picture himself being sexually submissive. Apparently when the hormones kicked in it would all make sense.

In the meantime, he wanted to fuck as often as he could; if he was going to do nothing but bottom in the future, he wanted to enjoy topping while he had the opportunity. Lately he’d been spending all of his horizontal time with Adrian who was not only smart and funny but already had an impressive physique due to all of his surfing.

And, apparently, handstands.

Adrian surfaced smoothly from the deep end of the pool and Deran enjoyed the sight. His light-colored hair—not really red or blond but a blend of the two—was slicked back which called attention to his bright blue eyes and his blinding smile. Deran admired his smooth, freckled skin as he stroked over to the edge of the pool where Deran was sitting with his legs dangling in the water; Adrian, ever the flirt with Deran when he wasn’t talking about identities, lightly splashed him while giving him a coy look. 

Deran was going to invite Adrian inside to his bedroom but he must’ve delayed for a bit too long in issuing his invitation because his friend shrugged, hung on to the edge of pool, and picked up his one-sided conversation again. “I mean making contracts for sex is kind of out there but I can’t imagine having every aspect of my life dictated by my allele identity, it’s just crazy, and I don’t know how you—”

“Adrian?” Deran interrupted the flow of words when he leaned over and cupped Adrian’s cheeks with his hands, drawing him closer. Adrian bobbed in the water so they were almost nose to nose. 

Adrian blinked his big, blue eyes at Deran. His pupils expanded giving him a drugged look as he stared up at Deran. “Yeah?” His voice had a breathy quality to it that made Deran squirm where he sat as his dick hardened in his shorts.

“Do you want to keep talking about identity alleles or do you want me to fuck you?” Deran shifted his hands until they cupped both sides of Adrian’s neck. 

Pinning him in place. 

Licking his lips, Adrian moaned, “Fuck.”

Deran wasn’t sure if that was a response to the pressure he was applying to Adrian’s neck or if that was his response to Deran’s question but he took it as the latter. “Come on, let’s take this inside.”

Letting go of Adrian, Deran pushed to his feet and extended his hands down toward his friend. Adrian reached up and clasped Deran’s wrists and Deran adjusted his grip to do the same. With Adrian scaling the side of the pool with his feet Deran easily hoisted his friend out of the water and settled him poolside.

“Whoa, Little D, you been working out?” Craig’s voice boomed across the yard, startling him. Deran had been so enraptured with Adrian that he hadn’t heard his brother’s approach.

Craig pulled up short, nose wrinkling. “Dude, you better not let Smurf catch you.”

Adrian stepped backward so that Deran was closer to his brother at the same time Deran stepped forward. Deran might be recessive, assuming Smurf was right, but he’d always had the urge to protect his friend. 

His friend faded back toward the towels resting on a lounger, giving the brothers some privacy. “What’s the big fucking deal? You entertain in the house all of the time when Smurf’s not here.” Deran scowled at his much taller brother. 

Craig might be a dominant but he stepped back from his smaller, younger brother. “Smurf doesn’t want someone triggering you this close to your presentation.” Craig said that with a straight face.

“That’s an old fucking wives’ tale.” Deran was so pissed off he thought the top of his head might explode. Being around a dominant didn’t trigger a presentation, at least according to Adrian. Now, if a recessive was around a dominant and already going through a hormonal surge, aka heat, that’s when shit got interesting. Two horny people at the same time…even Deran could do the math on that one and he hated math.

Adrian always bitched that it was bad enough that people had to deal with the hormones associated with puberty but having to do it a second time was unfair. Not that they knew firsthand because they were still waiting for round two. 

Round two for dominants and recessives sounded weird. That’s when contracts for sex sometimes came into play. Deran didn’t like the thought of that at all—being bartered for money or favor or whatever—and he sure as hell didn’t like the thought of being mounted, bitten on his gland and taken.

It all came down to the fucking alleles and hormones.

Craig put his hands up. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

Adrian returned with his t-shirt and shoes on, clutching his keys. “I’m, ah, going to take off. Call me later?”

Deran wanted to rage. He could almost smell the sex pheromones wafting off of Adrian and if Craig wasn’t lurking over his shoulder, he was pretty sure he’d throw Adrian down on the lounger and they’d go at it like bunnies in broad daylight. But no; he’d been cock blocked by his fucking brother.

He squeezed his fingers into tight fists, his nails breaking skin on his palms; he wanted to touch Adrian. _Now_.

Instead he gave a tight smile. “Talk to you later.”

Watching as Adrian walked toward the driveway—admiring the way his ass shifted behind the wet material of his shorts—Deran didn’t turn back until his friend disappeared from view. 

He found Craig silently standing at his side, staring at him. “What?”

Craig’s eyebrows had climbed high on his forehead. “The air is thick with hormones. Someone is going to present soon.”

Deran rolled his eyes. “I don’t feel different,” he huffed. That wasn’t strictly true; he had felt pretty territorial about Adrian. Did recessives get territorial? Weird. He’d talk to Adrian about it later. Maybe he should start taking this shit more serious and learn more about what life would be like.

“Yeah, you’re still the same little cocky shit as always.” Craig didn’t sound like he was kidding but Deran couldn’t read him. His brother’s head was cocked to the side, watching Deran closely. His brother was weird but this was taking it to a new level. 

Deran brushed by him. “I’m hungry. Want to split a pizza with me?”

That at least got Craig back on track. “Yeah, I skipped lunch.”

Deran was going to ask why Craig had missed lunch but then he decided he didn’t want to be treated to the further sexual exploits of his brother. 

Especially since his brother had prevented Deran from pursuing his own.

He forced himself to relax. Later he would call Adrian and they’d hook up. It would be okay.

-0-

Last night had really sucked. Adrian hadn’t answered his phone which sometimes happened when his parents took it away to teach him a lesson so Deran had stayed at home. Cooped up with his weird family who acted progressively weirder as the evening had worn on.

He’d caught the tail end of Smurf grilling Craig about something and her final words to him had been, “Over my dead body is some beach rat going to lay claim—!” She cut herself off as Deran wandered into the kitchen.

Craig was red in the face and Deran assumed Smurf was trying to dictate terms of his love life again. For being a dominant, Craig sure let Smurf push him around.

Then, on the way back to his room, he’d overhead Pope and Baz cackling about something and they’d shut up as soon they saw Deran.

It was a new day and nothing had changed. His family was still being weird and Adrian still wasn’t answering his phone so he couldn’t even vent to his friend.

Or make plans to meet up.

The world was conspiring against him and it sucked.

He sprawled across the bed, leaning on an elbows so he could see the screen on his laptop. He was done with school and waiting for the next phase of his life to start and he was bored. Maybe he could search out some porn. Before he could type anything into the search bar his cell phone rang and he glanced at the incoming call; he didn’t recognize the number. 

Something made him answer—probably boredom—and his greeting was less than welcoming as he infused it with all of the frustration he was currently feeling. “Who the fuck is this?”

“Deran?” The voice had a tinny quality to it; either his phone was a piece of shit, which it was, or the call was coming from a distance. Either way, the voice was unmistakable: Adrian.

“You sound like you’re a million miles away. Where are you?” Deran had chilled out. It was nice to have contact with the one sane person in his life at the moment.

He heard a noise, like Adrian catching his breath, and strained to figure out what was going on. Adrian made the same noise again before he sighed out his answer. “Tofino.”

“What the fuck are you doing in Canada?” Deran couldn’t wrap his head around this; Adrian had been here, in the pool, yesterday and now he was on Vancouver Island? Sure, it was world renowned for its surfing but so was Black’s Beach and that was right in their fucking backyard.

“Someone sprung for me to attend a special surfing camp up here. I don’t know, it happened so fast, and my parents wouldn’t even let me take my phone or laptop.” This time Deran easily identified the telltale sniff after Adrian answered. 

What the fuck? Adrian didn’t cry, at least not around Deran, and he was upset about being sent to surfing camp? _Surfing_. Although Deran didn’t understand why his parents didn’t want Adrian to have a means to communicate. But surfing. In Canada. That was good news. Or at least it should’ve been. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Adrian’s voice cracked. “I didn’t want to leave but they made me.”

“But you’ve been surfing, right?” Usually when Adrian was on his board he was at his happiest. 

“Deran, the water is fucking freezing. I can’t warm up.” There was a clicking noise and Deran wondered if Adrian’s teeth were chattering.

Or was this just some elaborate ruse to get a rise out of Deran? That wasn’t Adrian’s style though. Colby or Ox liked to pull pranks. Hell, even his brothers would set him up. But not Adrian. 

His best friend was a steady presence in his life. As much as Adrian liked sports, he also liked school and learning. He wasn’t a straight arrow but he also wasn’t into doing things just to provoke a reaction.

This shit was real. Weird but real. So, how did he help? “Whose phone are you using?” Maybe Adrian just needed a live person to talk to in order to short circuit this little meltdown.

“Théo’s. He’s my roommate.” There was that suspicious sniff again. 

“Is he around?” Deran pressed. He needed eyes and ears on the ground to assess the situation.

Adrian gave another juddering breath. “No, he went to dinner.”

Dean wanted to ask why Adrian hadn’t gone to dinner but his friend could be defensive when it came to eating meals. Or worse, there could be more sniffing and crying. “Okay, does your roommate have a laptop? Can you use it?”

“Ummm,” Adrian hummed; it was the noise he made when he was trying to decide the risk-reward of doing something that might lead to him getting caught doing something without permission.

“Adrian, get the laptop. Now. I want you to Skype or FaceTime or whatever the fuck he has on his laptop.” Deran barked his directions, not because he was mean but because he didn’t want Adrian to get caught in a dithering spiral which he was prone to doing when he was stressed out. 

The call disconnected which was enough to make Deran sputter in disbelief. He pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at it, trying to decide his next course of action. At the moment he wanted to fly to Canada and kick Adrian’s ass. Or do something to his ass. Fuck, he was horny.

Before he could redial the number of Adrian’s roommate’s phone, his laptop indicated an incoming FaceTime call from Theo with an acute accent over the ‘e’.

This had better be Adrian. 

Deran took a centering breath before answering. “Hey.” He needed to keep it simple.

“Hi,” Adrian croaked out.

His friend sounded rough.

He looked rougher.

“Jesus, Adrian, what the hell is going on up there? Is someone hassling you?” Deran managed to moderate his tone so he wouldn’t set his friend off. But if someone was giving Adrian a hard time, Deran didn’t care what Smurf said; he was going up there and sorting shit out.

The picture of listlessness, Adrian shrugged his shoulders and licked his lips at a glacial pace. Deran wanted to take his shoulders in hand and shake them to provoke some sort of normal response. 

Or kiss him.

Or both.

The thought of touching Adrian led to other thoughts but now wasn’t the time; he needed to snap his friend out of this funk. He needed a distraction. “Tell me about the area.” 

“There was some jacking but for the most part it was heavy.” Of course, Adrian would talk about the water conditions. 

Deran stared hard at his friend who fidgeted. Adrian’s eyes were red so yep, he’d most likely been crying, but the bloodshot threads only made his dark blue eyes stand out more. Even a snotty red-eyed mess, the guy was beautiful. “What about the island?”

Adrian almost became animated as he began to describe the area. “There’s a rainforest here. It’s not tropical, it’s temperate, and it’s…,” Adrian’s energy seemed to falter as he took a steadying breath. “Not home.”

“You’re homesick.” Deran hadn’t meant to make that declaration and he held his breath, waiting for Adrian’s response. He expected a _fuck off_ or a rude gesture or even a change in subject.

Instead moisture clumped Adrian’s eyelashes together and his cheeks and nose looked splotchy. “Yeah,” he breathed out shakily.

Deran rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe humor would work? Because at this rate he would be going to Canada. “Okay, sure. It is awesome here. I mean we have world class surfing. There’s the pool. And best of all there’s me. I totally can understand why you’d be homesick without me by your side.” 

If Adrian couldn’t verbally respond Dean would’ve settled for an eyeroll; instead Adrian nodded his head looking even more miserable.

There was a commotion as people entered Adrian’s room and started talking to his friend. Deran thought he could pick out the voices of two males, one voice sounded deeper and the other a slight accent.

“When did this start?” The deeper voiced guy said.

Deran lost sight of Adrian as the laptop was moved. “Adrian will have to call you back later.” Maybe this Théo was French Canadian? He sounded nice enough. And sexy. Deran resented that someone else was rooming with his friend. He should be the one seeing to Adrian’s needs.

There was no chance for Deran to say anything as the connection was terminated.

He slumped on the bed, feeling out of sorts. Sure, he missed Adrian but not enough to cry.

In fact, he wanted to pound someone’s face in for sending Adrian away. Not because Adrian didn’t deserve to surf up north but because his friend hadn’t wanted to go and his parents had made him.

The guy was homesick and there wasn’t anything Deran could do for him except fret.

Well, that and a little research.

-0-

It had been two days since Deran had seen Adrian and he felt like he was losing his mind. Adrian was his best friend but they’d gone a week without seeing each other before and it hadn’t been a problem.

There was a knock on his door and when he gave permission, Craig entered. He paused at the threshold, lifting his nose and sniffing. 

Deran rolled his eyes. “You’re so fucking weird.”

“What? The scent is gone. The cinnamon or vanilla or whatever the bakery smell is that usually clings to you.” Craig looked around the room as if the answer to his question would appear.

“Oh.” Deran took a deep breath as the realization hit him. “That’s Adrian. He always smells good.”

Craig frowned but he didn’t say anything for a long moment. He finally squared his shoulders and forged ahead. “Oh. Well, you want to go to the beach? Brennan is having a party.” 

Deran wasn’t in the mood to party but maybe he needed a distraction. There wasn’t anything he could do for Adrian from here except wait to hear from him.

Or call Théo now that he had his contact information. Although Théo had hung up on him.

Feeling out of sorts, and sorry for himself, Deran nodded his agreement.

His brother hauled him off the bed and put his arm around him. “It’ll be okay, bro. You’ll see.”

He didn’t know what exactly Craig was referring to—it’s not like he knew about Adrian’s predicament—but he also didn’t want to expend the energy to find out. Not when he was feeling so raw about his friend.

The distance between him and Adrian bugged him.

So did the weird longing he had to make things better for his friend.

Slipping his feet into some flip flops, Deran followed Craig out the door. 

Tomorrow he’d sort this shit out even if it meant heading up north to Tofino.

Finis

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this square was homesickness. I hope you'll stick around to see what happens to Deran and Adrian next.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
